Ten minutes before the college application deadline.
That's when I found the post. The class beauty, the obsessive little stalker who'd been chasing my boyfriend for three years, had written it herself:
"Switched all of my dream guy's elite-university programs over to the vocational school near mine. I'll be on him every single day. No way I don't lock this down!"
In my last life, I logged into Alden James's application portal the second I saw it.
With one minute left, I changed every choice back.
Then I told Alden, and I told his mother, the one who'd gone half-mad wanting her son to be a star.
The James family called the police on the spot. Louisa Fox was dragged through the mud until her name was ruined, and that same night she jumped to her death.
Afterward, Alden and I both got into the elite national university together. We went from school uniforms to a wedding dress.
The day my water broke, our house caught fire in the dead of night.
When Alden smashed through the door and charged in through the flames, I thought he'd come to save me.
Instead he stood there watching me collapse into the fire, screaming in agony, then turned around, picked up a small box, and walked off with the photo inside.
"It's my fault. I was too young back then. I never understood who I really loved."
"If you hadn't snitched and gotten her killed, the one standing beside me right now would have been her."
"Today's the anniversary of her death. Grace Simmons, you and the baby can pay for her life together."
A roof beam snapped my spine. I burned alive in our marriage home.
Just before my consciousness slipped away, I heard Alden murmuring as he cradled Louisa's photo:
"If I could do it all over, I'd choose her."
Then I opened my eyes again.
I was back on the day Louisa changed the application.
This life.
I quietly backed out of the post.
——
"Gracie? What are you looking at? You're so absorbed."
Alden leaned in, curious, trying to peek at my phone.
I calmly switched off the screen. "Nothing."
The clock struck the hour. The last chance to change any application was gone.
This life, Alden was destined for that vocational school out in the middle of nowhere, tangled up forever with the woman he truly loved, Louisa.
I just didn't know whether Alden's mother, the one who'd gone mad wanting her son to make something of himself,
would ever let the two of them off the hook.
I turned to Alden and asked,
"Did you come to see me for something?"
"Did you forget? Today's the graduation dinner! I just passed my driver's test a couple of days ago, so I came to pick you up!"
He reached for my hand on instinct. I pulled away.
"Let's go, then. The teachers and everyone are waiting."
I ignored the hurt in Alden's eyes and headed for the passenger seat on my own,
only to find Louisa already sitting there, watching me with a challenge in her eyes.
"Sorry about that. I get a little carsick, so I took the front."
Alden's face darkened instantly. He went straight over and hauled her out.
"Who said you could sit here? This seat's for Gracie."
He turned to me, exasperated, explaining,
"Gracie, don't get the wrong idea. She was in the back this whole time. No idea what set her off this time… always stirring something up…"
Then he said to Louisa, a note of irritation in his voice,
"Let me say this one more time. The person I like is Gracie. I see you as nothing more than an ordinary classmate. If you keep pulling stunts like this with no sense of boundaries, I really will stop talking to you."
He guided me into the passenger seat, then pointed out everything he'd set up in there, fishing for praise like a kid showing off.
"Look, it's all the cartoon plushies and stickers you like. From now on this is your seat, only yours. Do you like it?"
I let out a small, dry laugh and said nothing.
If he were truly sick of her,
why would he have gone out of his way to drive over and pick her up? Why make her his very first passenger?
I remembered a lot of things from before.
Back when seats were being assigned, Louisa had shamelessly insisted on sitting beside Alden, and she'd thrown every single thing I'd laid out on my desk straight into the trash.
